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Typhoon Haiyan's official death toll is almost 4,000 and among the survivors are half a million people left homeless who face a huge task of rebuilding their lives.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: It's been two weeks since the 300 kilometre-an-hour winds of Super Typhoon Haiyan smashed into the islands of the Philippines.

Humanitarian aid finally appears to be getting through to the most needy.

The official death toll is now almost 4,000, with 2,000 more still listed as missing.

Among the survivors, half a million people are homeless, and for them, the job of rebuilding is massive.

South-East Asia correspondent Zoe Daniel reports on the recovery in the provincial centre of Tacloban, which bore the brunt of the storm.

ZOE DANIEL, REPORTER: Three million people displaced and more than half a million homes living without food, water or shelter.

WOMAN: 11 people; five cups of rice only.

MAN: We don't have food anymore.

ZOE DANIEL: The road to recovery will be long and slow.

TIM COSTELLO, WORLD VISION: Please, to the Australian public, don't give up on these very courageous people. They're desperate now and Australia needs to stay with them for the next couple of years.

ZOE DANIEL: The magnitude of the task is so great that the initial shock led to almost total paralysis, but now, relief is finally being delivered.

It's become a massive team effort to get food, water and medical and logistical help in and desperate people out. So many traumatised by the storm and its aftermath remain desperate to get away from this place and the dead that still litter its shattered streets.

But even amid the chaos and the destruction, not everyone is leaving. Some are slowly trying to pick up the pieces.

What's most striking about this situation is that this sort of damage continues for miles and miles and miles along the main roads and down all of these side streets where houses have just been absolutely smashed to pieces, families have lost everything; if not lives, at least all of their belongings. And we found a family down here last night who literally swam out of their house to save themselves and they're now living with two other families and trying to survive through this disaster.

Like everyone here, Issa Pudal and her family are recovering from trauma.

You had breakfast?

ISSA VERONICA PUDAL: We are just about to. You want one?

ZOE DANIEL: Oh, no. Thank you.

Three families have been living together here since the typhoon. We first came across them when we saw this sign at the end of their street. Then, Issa's neighbour told us how they lived through the storm.

How did you survive?

MAN: We just swim up here ...

ZOE DANIEL: You swam up to here?

MAN: Yes, yes.

ZOE DANIEL: Through the door?

MAN: Yeah, through the door and climb here.

ZOE DANIEL: You were all clinging up there?

MAN: Yes, yes.

ZOE DANIEL: How long were you up there for?

MAN: Long. Three to four hours. Three to four hours.

ZOE DANIEL: Gosh.

Today, Issa is cooking the breakfast while the others are out searching for food. She's lucky to be alive and she knows it. Her neighbouring family of five was not so fortunate.

ISSA VERONICA PUDAL: They drowned, the five of them, holding each other's arms. So that was very touching family, because even in death, they're always together. So, no-one's sad. Because it's very hard, if you're the only one left. And you will be grieving for the family members who died.

ZOE DANIEL: There are many families who are trying to help themselves despite the extraordinarily difficult conditions and the pervasive shock and grief.

There are so few buildings left that people are using whatever is available to find themselves some shelter. This family, for example, and we want to go and see them, but the big issue is how to get there across all of these broken buildings, bits of rubble, cars, and underneath, bodies.

Jeez. This is really quite difficult actually.

Can I come to see you? How do I come?

15 people including five children are living here in this makeshift house amid the debris. They're surviving on food they've collected from the rubble, much of it washed out of a nearby grocery shop.

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Our store open there, wash through here, ...

ZOE DANIEL: You picked up all the food from around?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Yes.

ZOE DANIEL: Yeah, OK. And how is it going in here when it's raining?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: It's cold.

ZOE DANIEL: It's very wet?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Yes.

ZOE DANIEL: It says a lot about the lack of alternative shelter that this group is living perched here surrounded by bodies.

FRANCIS VENIGAS: (Inaudible)

ZOE DANIEL: From here?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Over there, 20 people dead over there. Like this - like this now. It's smelly.

ZOE DANIEL: Yes, it is.

The toll will continue to rise as the dead are slowly collected.

There's a child. A body of a child.

FRANCIS VENIGAS: About 10 years old. (Getting emotional)

ZOE DANIEL: Are you OK?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Fine.

ZOE DANIEL: Yet still, Francis and his family want to stay.

So it's going to take a lot of cleaning up?

FRANCIS VENIGAS: Yeah.

ZOE DANIEL: You've set yourself a big task, right?

And with 13 million people affected overall, that task is almost incomprehensible. For the moment, the aid effort is about relief in the forms of basics like food and water. Actual recovery is a long way off.

TIM COSTELLO: We always confuse the emergency stage and recovery. Emergency is just save lives. That's the next week. The recovery stage is going to be two years.

ZOE DANIEL: Many of the people of Tacloban remain optimistic, but they're going to need lots of help to weather this storm.

ISSA VERONICA PUDAL: Continue to get help, because we really can't do it all alone. And then, um, believe in us, because we can do it. And because we're Filipinos and we're going to stand strong.